in the first half of 1863 comprised a more extreme opposition prevailing in the West and led by Clement Vallandigham, a Congressman from Ohio, and a milder opposition led by Horatio Seymour, who from the end of 1862 to the end of 1864, when he failed of re-election, was Governor of New York State. The extreme section were often called "Copperheads," after a venomous snake of that name. Strictly, perhaps, this political term should be limited to the few who went so far as to desire the victory of the South; more loosely it was applied to a far larger number who went no further than to say that the war should be stopped. This demand, it must be observed, was based upon the change of policy shown in the Proclamation of Emancipation. "The war for the Union," said Vallandigham in Congress in January, 1863, "is in your hands a most bloody and costly failure. War for the Union was abandoned; war for the negro openly begun. With what success? Let the dead at Fredericksburg answer.-Ought this war to continue? I answer no-not a day, not an hour. What then? Shall we separate? Again I answer, no, no, no.-Stop fighting. Make an armistice. Accept at once friendly foreign mediation." And further: "The secret but real purpose of the war was to abolish slavery in the States, and with it the change of our present democratical form of government into an imperial despotism." This was in no sense treason; it was merely humbug. The alleged design to establish despotism, chiefly revealed at that moment by the liberation of slaves, had of course no existence. Equally false, as will be seen later, was the whole suggestion that any peace could have been had with the South except on the terms of separation. Vallandigham, a demagogue of real vigour, had perhaps so much honesty as is compatible with self-deception; at any rate, upon his subsequent visit to the South his intercourse with Southern leaders was conducted on the footing that the Union should be restored. But his character inspired no respect. Burnside, now commanding the troops in Ohio, held that violent denunciation of the Government in a

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tone that tended to demoralise the troops was treason,
since it certainly was not patriotism, and when in May,
1863, Vallandigham made a very violent and offensive
speech in Ohio he had him arrested in his house at night,
and sent him before a court-martial which imprisoned
him. Loud protest was raised by every Democrat. This
worry came upon Lincoln just after Chancellorsville. He
regretted Burnside's action-later on he had to reverse
the rash suppression of a newspaper by which Burnside
provoked violent indignation-but on this occasion he
would only say in public that he "regretted the necessity'
of such action. Evidently he thought it his duty to sup-
port a well-intentioned general against a dangerous agita-
tor. The course which after some consideration he took
was of the nature of a practical joke, perhaps justified by
its success. Vallandigham was indeed released; he was
taken to the front and handed over to the Confederates
as if he had been an exchanged prisoner of war. In reply
to demands from the Democratic organisation in
Ohio that Vallandigham might be allowed to return home,
Lincoln offered to consent if their leaders would sign a
pledge to support the war and promote the efficiency of
the army.
This they called an evasion. Vallandigham
made his way to Canada and conducted intrigues from
thence. In his absence he was put up for the governor-
ship of Ohio in November, but defeated by a huge ma-
jority, doubtless the larger because of Gettysburg and
Vicksburg. The next year he suddenly returned home,
braving the chance of arrest, and, probably to his dis-
appointment, Lincoln let him be. In reply to protests
against Vallandigham's arrest which had been sent by
meetings in Ohio and New York, Lincoln had written.
clear defences of his action, from which the foregoing
account of his views on martial law has been taken. In
one of them was a sentence which probably went further
with the people of the North than any other: "Must I
shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I
must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him
to desert?" There may or may not be some fallacy

lurking here, but it must not be supposed that this sentence came from a pleader's ingenuity. It was the expression of a man really agonised by his weekly task of confirming sentences on deserters from the army.

Governor Seymour was a more presentable antagonist than Vallandigham. He did not propose to stop the war. On the contrary, his case was that the war could only be effectively carried on by a law-abiding Government, which would unite the people by maintaining the Constitution, not, as the Radicals argued, by the flagitious policy of freeing the slaves. It should be added that he was really concerned at the corruption which was becom ing rife, for which war contracts gave some scope, and which, with a critic's obliviousness to the limitations of human force, he thought the most heavily-burdened Administration of its time could easily have put down. With a little imagination it is easy to understand the difficult position of the orthodox Democrats, who two years before had voted against restricting the extension of slavery, and were now asked for the sake of the Union to support a Government which was actually abolishing slavery by martial law. Also the attitude of the thoroughly selfrighteous partisan is perfectly usual. Many of Governor Seymour's utterances were fair enough, and much of his conduct was patriotic enough. His main proceedings can be briefly summarised. His election as Governor in the end of 1862 was regarded as an important event, the appearance of a new leader holding an office of the greatest influence. Lincoln, assuming, as he had a right to do, the full willingness of Seymour to co-operate in prosecuting the war, did the simplest and best thing. He wrote and invited Seymour after his inauguration in March, 1863, to a personal conference with himself as to the ways in which, with their divergent views, they could best co-operate. The Governor waited three weeks before he acknowledged this letter. He then wrote and promised a full reply later. He never sent this reply. He protested energetically and firmly against the arrest of Vallandigham. In July, 1863, the Conscription Act

began to be put in force in New York city; then occurred
the only serious trouble that ever did occur under the
Act; and it was very serious. A mob of foreign immi-
grants, mainly Irish, put a forcible stop to the proceeding
of the draft. It set fire to the houses of prominent
Republicans, and prevented the fire brigade from saving
them. It gave chase to all negroes that it met, beating
some to death, stringing up others to trees and lamp-posts
and burning them as they hung. It burned down an
orphanage for coloured children after the police had with
difficulty saved its helpless inmates. Four days of riot-
ing prevailed throughout the city before the arrival of
fresh troops restored order. After an interval of prudent
length the draft was successfully carried out. Governor
Seymour arrived in the city during the riots. He ha-
rangued this defiled mob in gentle terms, promising them,
if they would be good, to help them in securing redress
of the grievance to which he attributed their conduct.
Thenceforward to the end of his term of office he per-
secuted Lincoln with complaints as to the unfairness of
the quota imposed on certain districts under the Con-
scription Act. It is true that he also protested on pre-
sumably sincere constitutional grounds against the Act
itself, begging Lincoln to suspend its enforcement till its
validity had been determined by the Courts. As to this
Lincoln most properly agreed to facilitate, if he could,
an appeal to the Supreme Court, but declined, on the
ground of urgent military necessity, to delay the drafts
in the meantime. Seymour's obstructive conduct, how-
ever, was not confined to the intelligible ground of ob-
jection to the Act itself; it showed itself in the perpetual
assertion that the quotas were unfair. No complaint as
to this had been raised before the riots. It seems that a
quite unintended error may in fact at first have been
made. Lincoln, however, immediately reduced the quotas
in question to the full extent which the alleged error
would have required. Fresh complaints from Seymour
followed, and so on to the end. Ultimately Seymour
was invited to come to Washington and have out the

whole matter of his complaints in conference with Stanton. Like a prudent man, he again refused to face personal conference. It seems that Governor Seymour, who was a great person in his day, was very decidedly, in the common acceptance of the term, a gentleman. This has been counted unto him for righteousness. It should rather be treated as an aggravation of his very unmeritable conduct.

Thus, since the Proclamation of Emancipation the North had again become possessed of what is sometimes considered a necessity of good government, an organised Opposition ready and anxious to take the place of the existing Administration. It can well be understood that honourable men entered into this combination, but it is difficult to conceive on what common principle they could hold together which would not have been disastrous in its working. The more extreme leaders, who were likely to prove the driving force among them, were not unfitly satirised in a novel of the time called the "Man Without a Country." Their chance of success in fact depended upon the ill-fortune of their country in the war and on the irritation against the Government, which could be aroused by that cause alone and not by such abuses as they fairly criticised. In the latter part of 1863 the war was going well. A great meeting of "Union men was summoned in August in Illinois. Lincoln was tempted to go and speak to them, but he contented himself with a letter. Phrases in it might suggest the stump orator, more than in fact his actual stump speeches usually did. In it, however, he made plain in the simplest language the total fallacy of such talk of peace as had lately become common; the Confederacy meant the Confederate army and the men who controlled it; as a fact no suggestion of peace or compromise came from them; if it ever came, the people should know it. In equally simple terms he sought to justify, even to supporters of the Union who did not share his "wish that all men could be free," his policy in regard to emancipation. In any case, freedom had for the sake of the Union been prom

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